


Ending The Alphabet

by forest_roses



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I'm Sorry, I'm bad at writing angst but I did my best, Kinda, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, also do not drink lighter fluid, and they are not able to be categorized by humans, i was going to write fluff and this happened, it's just a poorly executed metaphor, kepler experiences exactly two emotions, this is not a happy story so please read with caution, this may be out of character but kepler is highly dissociating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24729295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forest_roses/pseuds/forest_roses
Summary: You hate seeing the stars now. They are a bitter reminder of things you’d rather forget, and they put a sliver of pain in your chest every time you look at the night sky.So, naturally, you are sitting out on your balcony, in the too-large apartment you got with all the money from Goddard, watching the clouds shift over the black and the prickling lights above.Or: what if Jacobi had died instead?
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: 500 Words Week 2020





	Ending The Alphabet

**Author's Note:**

> This is my third piece for my self imposed week long challenge. I'm writing one fic a day, 500+ words, and posting with little editing because I want to see how much I can do without it.  
> I started writing fluff, and then I stopped.  
> Title is from Ending The Alphabet by The Mountain Goats.

You hate seeing the stars now. They are a bitter reminder of things you’d rather forget, and they put a sliver of pain in your chest every time you look at the night sky.

So, naturally, you are sitting out on your balcony, in the too-large apartment you got with all the money from Goddard, watching the clouds shift over the black and the prickling lights above. You chose to live in a city when you came back to Earth; you like the way the smog chokes out the sky and claws at your throat and eyes when you sit in your uncomfortably expensive chair, listening to the cars pass below you. You watch the stars even when they aren’t visible: there is a part of you still up there with one, seven and a half light years away from earth; it has been there since the day your shriveled husk of a heart truly died and it will be there long after the rest of you has gone, too.

There’s a glass of whiskey on the table next to you. You wince when you drink it. It feels like pouring lighter fluid directly into your lungs, and tastes similar. There’s another mostly-empty bottle on a shelf high up in your kitchen, though it’s much higher quality. It makes you want to throw up every time you catch sight of it. You will never move it. The bottle is covered in dust and there’s a cobweb on the right side. The rest of the apartment you clean meticulously every week, but you don’t touch that spot.

Sometimes, the ghost of its smell will pass you as you walk by the shelf, and for a moment you think you hear a voice,  _ his _ voice, and you go weak at the knees the way you never did before you met him. Your throat hurts, and your eyes are open but they don’t see anything, and you’re sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the kitchen cabinets, and you wish you’d thrown yourself out that airlock with him. You wouldn’t have, you know that, but you  _ wish _ you did. It’s an unpleasant thought, and so you let it roll around the vacancy of your mind for a while, and then you get up and try to forget it all again.

It hurts, all the time. You thought it might stop hurting eventually, but when the stinging started to recede from your mind, you panicked. You panicked and you’d never panicked before and it felt like you were dying, and you stood there in the bedroom doorway gasping for air and wondering if he felt like this when he died. The thought hurt far worse than you thought it would, but it brought up more memories of him, however much it pained you to think of them. You learned over time that that was a way to keep his memory from fading completely, and you knew it wasn’t healthy, but it wasn’t like you had anybody else to help you. He’d probably be disgusted by what you’ve become. He’d probably come up to you and take the glass out of your hand and make you sit on the couch or the bed, and he’d stay with you when you fell asleep because he cared.

You don’t care anymore. Not about you. So you drink from your glass of bitter remembrance, and you watch the stars and the shifting clouds until morning, and you think about him.

He died three years ago, tonight.

You think about him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, I'd appreciate comments or kudos. Or if you hate me for writing this, you can comment about that instead. I apologize if this is painful to read, either because it's sad or just because I'm not good at writing angst.


End file.
